


in our bedroom after the war

by UchiHime



Category: Stray Kids (Band)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Angst, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Implied Sexual Content, M/M, POV Alternating, Permanent Injury, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Post-War, Psychologists & Psychiatrists, Recovery, Somehow I'm gonna make this OT8, hopefully
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-01-28
Updated: 2021-02-22
Packaged: 2021-03-13 18:54:04
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 13,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29033484
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UchiHime/pseuds/UchiHime
Summary: The war is over.Changbin does not know where to begin counting his losses. Felix has to figure out how to exist as only half a person. Minho searches for warmth in the wrong places.But at least the war is over.
Relationships: Han Jisung | Han & Lee Felix, Han Jisung | Han/Lee Minho | Lee Know, Hwang Hyunjin/Seo Changbin, Kim Seungmin/Yang Jeongin | I.N, Lee Felix & Yang Jeongin | I.N, Lee Felix/Lee Minho | Lee Know
Comments: 14
Kudos: 33





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> title and inspiration from the stars song of the same name. i've been working on this for a while and have been impatient to share it, that being said, updates will probably be slow coming, sorry.

###  Chapter One

Waking up is the hardest part sometimes.

On the rare nights he actually manages to sleep at all, and isn’t woken by night terrors shortly after, waking up on his own feels like more of a challenge than climbing a mountain. It’s not like he wants to stay asleep, just that he doesn’t want to be awake. Because what’s the point? What’s the point of anything anymore?

Asleep or awake, there’s no purpose to his existence.

The lights in his bedroom are on a magic timer, a spell he hadn’t cast himself but could easily overpower if he had the desire; they’ll grow progressively brighter the longer he lies in bed until it’s too bright to be ignored, burning his eyes even while they’re closed. It’s meant to be a less jarring alternative to a traditional alarm clock. He finds it more annoying than anything.

His own magic is a pressure under his skin that he forces himself to ignore. He hasn’t cast anything stronger than a fire-starting spell for months now. Magic is meant to be used, and not doing so can sometimes have adverse effects, but it probably can’t make anything any worse than it already is.

His ankle itches. He forces himself to ignore that as well, simply because he knows attempting to scratch it will be pointless. His leg does not exist below the knee. The phantom sensations he receives from it is just a reminder of what is lost.

Once he manages to drag himself out of bed, the lights instantly dimming to a more manageable intensity, he feels directionless. He wanders his small apartment, which is too empty and impersonal to ever really feel like home, searching for tasks to fill his time.

His prosthesis is magic-dependent, so more often than not, he forgoes it completely, hobbling around on one leg and crutches.

He wanders into the kitchen and opens the fridge, blinks impassively at the sparse contents inside before closing the door and moving on. He tries not to think too hard about when he’d last eaten. Food isn’t his friend right now and making himself eat a meal requires more effort that he’s willing to give.

He wanders into the living room, for probably the tenth or twelfth time, and makes himself stop. Walking on crutches is more tiring than he’s willing to admit and he needs to rest. He sits on the couch and turns on the television for the noise more than for any desire to watch it.

He grabs his laptop off the coffee table and checks his email, hoping for a new commission to fill his time, but there’s no work waiting for him. He clicks around, directionless, but there’s nothing online that holds his interest.

His gaze drifts away from the screen and to the small window next to the couch. Outside, people are going about their day, business professionals and young couples, children and teens, living the best lives they can during these times of peace.

His apartment overlooks a small commercial district. The street is dotted with small family-run shops selling household spells and minor defensive charms and quick cure potions that are probably as useful as snake oil. There’s a coffee shop at the end of the street, catty-corner to a convenience store. There’s a park not too far that attracts children from the nearby schools.

Changbin blinks and suddenly it’s nighttime. 

The shops outside the window are locking their doors and setting their alarm spells. All the children have returned to their homes, ushered by their parents voices cast through far-speak spells. Only a few stragglers occupy the street, mostly drunken revelers flaunting their magic with useless light displays.

The television is playing some old drama and it’s the only noise in the entire house, other than the ever present hum of the latent magic that powers everything.

He has no idea where the time went.

“Hey,” Hyunjin says, and Changbin wonders when he’d arrived. “Food, hyung,” Hyunjin orders, poking Changbin until he acknowledges him. “You know, that thing people are required to consume in order to stay alive?”

Changbin just looks at him.

“I’d offer to cook for you, but you know how that’ll go.” Hyunjin grins and shrugs as if to say,  _ what can you do? _ He frowns at Changbin’s lack of reaction. “C’mon, Binnie-hyung, you know you need to eat something.”

With a sigh, Changbin forces himself up from the sofa, leaning heavily on a crutch, and steps past Hyunjin without a word. He goes back to the kitchen, opens the fridge, and frowns at its contents. He gathers bread and milk and eggs, before turning to his rarely used stove top. Hyunjin sits on the counter top and forces Changbin to work around him.

Hyunjin is gone by the time Changbin is done cooking. Changbin makes himself eat one slice of eggy toast, but it tastes like ashes in his mouth and each bite is chewed many more times than needed, because he can’t bring himself to swallow it. He decides a second slice is more than he can stomach.

He does another circuit of the house, checking that the door and windows are all locked and that he’d remembered to turn off the stove, before going to his bedroom and falling into bed. Sleep does not come easily, and is far from peaceful when it does arrive.

He wakes with the name of a ghost on his lips, choking on sobs as he hugs a pillow to his chest.

-

It’s a slow day at the coffee shop, which is normal for weekdays during this time. After the early morning coffee rush, they’re generally pretty empty until the evening rush. They’re slow even through lunch time because they’re not located in a business area.

Because they’re so slow, they only have two people on duty most weekdays; someone working at the front coffee bar and someone working in the kitchen. Felix is the designated barista that day and Dowoon is the cook. 

Time drags. Felix doesn’t usually work the mid-morning shift, but Jeongyeon is on vacation with her girlfriend and had asked Felix to cover her shift. 

By the time he’s even on the clock, the morning rush has petered out. There’s a few stragglers, but then the shop is dead for hours. They pass the time, after cleaning and refilling everything, listening to music and folding origami animals. 

Origami is Dowoon’s special talent. Felix had asked him to teach him how to make cranes a while back, after watching an anime that promised him a wish if he could make a thousand, but Felix still hasn’t got the hang of it. 

By the time Felix completes a single crane, his tongue poked out in concentration as he carefully creases the paper as instructed, Dowoon has created an entire menagerie. Majestic paper lions next to elephants and tigers and foxes—there’s even a small dog that looks a lot like Felix’s Daengmo. The lions paw at the ground, the elephants raise their trunks, the tigers stand and lie, the foxes run in circles, and the little Daengmo does a backflip.

Felix’s paper crane, though not as crumpled as his earliest attempts, sits lifeless on the bartop. He can manage the careful folds to get it in shape now, but the delicate magic Dowoon imdues into each of his colorful creations is beyond Felix’s shaky control.

Early afternoon brings a few customers, no actual “lunch time rush” but sporadic bursts of busyness intermixed with more bursts of dullness. Felix smiles and chats happily with the few customers they do get, careful not to reveal just how bored he really is.

Felix doesn’t know much about economics or running a business, but he’s pretty certain had the shop not been owned by an independently wealthy businessman who kept it as a hobby, the coffee shop would have gone under ages ago for failing to turn a profit. Felix isn’t going to complain about it, though. They pay well despite the shop constantly being in the red and they let Felix bring Daengmo. He’d applied for a few other jobs before finding this place and every other place even remotely resembling food service would not allow him a dog on the premises, service animal or not. 

Once they run out of origami paper, Dowoon returns to the kitchen to find himself something else to do, leaving Felix alone with Daengmo to man the counter. 

A couple of young housewives had found their way in just at the end of the “lunch rush.” They’d claimed a table in the back, ordered only tea and pastries, but had been sitting there chatting for nearly an hour. Other than them, the shop is empty.

Felix is contemplating whether it’s actually possible to teach the real Daengmo to do backflips like his origami counterpart when JB arrives. Felix glances at the clock and is surprised to find that his shift is already over. The perk of covering the mid-morning shift is that he doesn’t have to stay there until the shop closes. Dowoon was scheduled for a double shift, but JB is Felix’s relief. For how boring it was, the time had passed surprisingly fast. Felix exchanges greetings with JB and calls a goodbye to Dowoon before rushing out the door.

-

Minho doesn’t like looking at himself in the mirror. 

That hadn’t always been the complete statement. Before, it would have said, “Minho doesn’t like looking at himself in the mirror when he dances.” He’d always found seeing himself in the mirror distracting when learning a new choreography. Now seeing himself in the mirror is something he finds altogether undesirable.

An argument could be made that Minho is vain, but that’s not quite true. He’s always been attractive and well aware of the fact. He constantly turns heads wherever he goes. He takes pride in his appearance, but he wouldn’t say he’s vain.

Now he turns heads for entirely different reasons. It’s not that he’s suddenly unattractive—he has good genetics, plain and simple, and anyone who tries to say he’s not beautiful is lying to themselves—but nowadays people spend more time trying not to stare at his scar than they do admiring his looks.

And just like strangers on the street, whenever he’s in front of a mirror, Minho’s eyes are inevitably drawn to the iridescent lines of raised flesh extending from the corner of his mouth and spreading across the right side of his jaw like the branches of a tree.

Magic scars are such beautiful things for all the ugliness they represent.

No matter how much time passes, Minho still cannot get used to them. He’s surprised every time he sees himself. His doctor had compared the scars on his face to Lichtenberg Figures, the scars people get when they survive being struck by lightning. 

It hadn’t been lightning that hit him.

Minho usually wears a mask over his nose and mouth when he’s out in public, so no one can see the scar and consequently stare at it, but forty-five minutes into the intermediate level dance class he teaches, it starts to get too warm and hard to catch his breath with the mask on. He calls for a two minute break, then lowers his mask to drink from his water bottle.

Most of his students are either too used to the scar or too focused on catching their breath themselves to bother with staring, but these aren’t his usual students. He’d taken over this class for a coworker, and while there are some familiar faces present, there’s enough new people that Minho’s entirely unsurprised by the sudden gasps and stumbling that happen as soon as he removes the mask. Minho has learned to ignore them just as he’s learned to ignore his own face in the mirror. 

The scar isn’t ugly so much as it is jarring. Minho hates it not because it’s a mar on his otherwise beautiful face, but because of what it represents. Most people assume he got the scar in the war, and that’s not entirely wrong but not exactly true either. Minho hadn’t fought in the war. He didn’t get his scar on a battlefield somewhere, but the war is still to blame.

He quickly gulps down his water and pulls his mask back into place. “Break’s over,” he calls, returning to his place at the front of the room. His students quickly hop to their feet and fall into their lines. 

“Alright, let’s do this full speed, no music, on my count. I am looking for clean lines and smooth transitions. Pay extra attention to your footwork and arm positioning. You ready? Let’s go.” Minho starts clapping his hands to keep the count, “One-and, two-and, three-and, four-and… very good.” He continues clapping the count and calling out corrections as needed, paying extra attention to the students he’d noticed had been struggling before, but mostly watching the group composition as whole. “Six. Seven. Eight. Perfect.”

The class reaches the end of the routine and Minho applauds them. “Great job everyone.” He glances at the clock on the back wall and adds, “We have just enough time to go through it once more with the music if you want to.”

The students are all a little winded, but quickly fall back into their lines without complaint. This is the second class of a three-lesson series Minho would be teaching. This would be the last chance for his students to get the choreo down, as the majority of their final class would be spent recording for the dance studio’s YouTube channel.

Minho falls into line along with his students and uses a remote to click play on the stereo system. The music starts, some English song that Minho only half understands the words to but can feel the message in the music, and Minho’s body begins to move without him even having to think about it. He’d choreographed this piece himself, he could do it in his sleep.

It’s one of many choreographies he’d made just for himself with no intention of teaching. He’d been asked to take over this class at the last minute when Momo’s girlfriend had suddenly dragged her away on a surprise vacation, and Minho hadn’t had time to prepare a new choreography on such short notice, so he’d just picked a random one from his personal collection to teach.

Coming up with new choreos is something Minho does to relax. There’s something about focusing on a new choreography that somehow brings order to the rest of his chaotic thoughts. Things start to make sense after long hours in the studio, when his muscles are burning from exertion and his limbs are almost too heavy to lift and exhaustion has brought a calmness to his mind.

The longest lasting relationship in Minho’s life is the one he has with dance. Nothing else compares to it.

His eyes stay fixed on the mirror, not looking at himself but at his students. They’re all keeping up fine. Some people are already adding their own flourishes to the moves, but mostly everyone is moving smoothly in sync.

Minho had only taught them about a minute's worth of choreography and it seems to pass in a blink as they transition from one move to another with ease. Minho is proud.

“Well done, everyone,” Minho says as he pauses the song before it can continue into the second verse. He gives them a round of applause and they join in. “You worked hard today. Let’s wrap up.”

As the class disbands, Minho goes for another drink from his water battle. He tries to ignore the eyes that are on him as soon as he lowers his mask.


	2. Chapter 2

###  Chapter Two

Felix wakes in a bed that’s familiar, but is not his own. 

There’s a person in the bed with him that he doesn’t have to look at to know who it is. They'd both pressed themselves so close to their respective sides of the bed, there’s enough space between them for another person. Which is kind of ironic, all things considered. 

Out of habit more than anything, Felix lies there and  _ reaches _ with his mind and magic, searching for the presence that had always been there for as long as he could remember. 

It’s like he’d screamed down a dark tunnel, his voice and magic ricocheting off walls and echoing back to him, finding nothing at the end. His soul aches. He wonders if he’ll ever get used to feeling so empty.

Just as he’s about to pull his magic back in, another presence flares at just the edge of his consciousness. It’s tiny like a match flame, nothing at all like the wildfire he’d been searching for. It serves only as a reminder of what he’s missing.

Felix sighs, and sits up, blankets sliding down and pooling around his waist. He’s naked and covered in things he doesn’t want to think about. The room smells like sex and regrets. The clock on the bedside table shows a time just before dawn, which is good because Felix has an opening shift and he’s on the opposite side of the city from where he needs to be, but it’s early enough that he’s not too worried about being late. He’ll need to call Jeongin on the way, as his roommate is likely to worry over the fact that he didn’t come home the night before, but that won’t be a problem.

“Sunshine.” 

Felix freezes. While it is a pet name Felix is sometimes called, he knows it’s not him his bedmate is calling for. Felix glances over, and lets out his held breath in relief when he realizes the other is still asleep.

Slowly, Felix climbs out of bed and gets to his feet, feeling a familiar ache deep inside him as he does so. It’s not like Felix is under any delusions of what he did or didn’t do the night before. He’d been fully sober and consenting (unless you consider soul deep grief as a form of intoxication) when he’d fallen into this bed, but he’s deliberately choosing not to think about it. That way madness lies. 

There’s just enough light filtering through the uncovered window for Felix to find his clothes and other possessions scattered across the floor. He gathers everything into his arms as quickly and silently as he can, not bothering with getting dressed, then tiptoes over to the door and pulls it open just enough to slip out. He’s not going to have time to go home for fresh clothes before he needs to be at work, so he’s going to have to magic these clean and hope no one notices he’s wearing the same thing as the previous day.

He pulls the door closed behind him and glances down. As he’d expected, the only witness to his walk of shame, and the source of the tiny flame in his consciousness, is obediently waiting for him. 

“Good morning, Daengmo,” Felix whispers.

The small Pomeranian looks up at him with a curious head tilt and a lolling tongue. Felix is sure he’s only imagining the judgement he senses coming from the small dog. Daengmo had spent the night locked out of the room where Felix was, which is something the dog was never happy about.

Daengmo is a trained service animal, specifically a medical alert dog, that Felix had bonded to as a Familiar. Felix’s control over his magic in recent times has been shaky at best and nonexistent at worse, which is a dangerous thing. Pomeranians are a breed with unusually high magic awareness, so Daengmo is able to ground Felix whenever his magic goes out of control and even alert him when his control is starting to wane before there’s any obvious signs. But in order to do his job best, he needs to be near Felix, not locked on the other side of the door.

Their Familiar bond made Daengmo slightly smarter than the average dog and gave him a stronger awareness of Felix’s magic and mental state, so he can monitor Felix’s condition even if they’re not in the same room, but in order to have any real effect on grounding Felix’s fluctuating magic, Daengmo needed to be able to touch him.

“I’m sorry, Daengmo,” Felix mumbles, kneeling down and petting the dog to reassure him that he’s fine. 

Daengmo nuzzles Felix’s hand and happily licks his fingers. Felix can’t help but smile.

“I just need a quick shower and then we can get out of here,” Felix says, running his fingers through the dog’s fluffy fur. He stands and heads into the bathroom that’s right across the hall from the bedroom in this small apartment. 

He lets out a startled screech, luckily remembering to keep his voice low, when glowing eyes peer back at him from the dark room.

The cat in the sink basin stands lazily and stretches, before hopping down and slipping past Felix’s ankles to exit the bathroom, paying no attention to man or dog as it goes. Felix rolls his eyes, then goes to start his shower. He needs to be quick if he doesn’t want to be late for work.

Daengmo follows him into the bathroom and hops up on the closed toilet seat to wait for him.

Felix showers quickly and manages to magic his clothes clean without an uncontrolled outburst destroying the apartment around them. He gets dressed and stuffs his phone and keys into his pocket.

He’d picked up the sling he uses to carry Daengmo along with his clothes. “In you go,” he says, holding it open for the dog to climb in. Daengmo settles into the sling with no problem and sits patiently as Felix adjusts it around himself.

“Alright, time to make our great escape.” He opens the door and peers into the hall. It’s as dark and empty as it’d been when he’d first entered the bathroom.

Felix tiptoes past the closed bedroom door, dodges a second cat in the living room, and slips out of the apartment without looking back.

-

Changbin doesn’t know the nature of Kim Minjun’s magic. It’s probably something empathic, to help him suss out the concealed emotions, half-truths, and outright lies of his patients. But, Changbin thinks he might have read somewhere that people with magic that leans towards emotional empathy tend to avoid careers where they’re surrounded by high emotions, so maybe not. On paper, psychiatry sounds like a good career for an empath, but in practice they end up overwhelmed by the strong emotional extremes encountered.

Hyunjin has empathic magic and he’s always avoided places like hospitals or schools during exam season. Changbin’s own magic is empathic to an extent as well, though it is not his dominant nature and isn’t enough to categorize him as an empath, so he has an easier time ignoring heightened emotions.

Changbin has never seen Dr. Kim do anything more than the most basic spells that anyone can do no matter their magical leanings, so he really has no clues as to what his nature might be.

“How are you?” Dr. Kim asks, one leg crossed over the other and a notepad balanced on his knee. Instead of replying, Changbin crosses his own legs and stares down at his lap. He always wears his prosthetic to meetings with Dr. Kim, a poor attempt at pretending to have his shit together. It doesn’t fool him, and Changbin knows it, but maybe it’s enough to make him believe Changbin is at least  _ trying _ .

“Not good then,” Dr. Kim states after Changbin’s silence extends a few seconds too long. 

He can hear the scratch of pen on paper and Changbin wonders, not for the first time, why Dr. Kim takes notes this way instead of by electronic or magical means.

“Not good,” Changbin repeats, annoyed by the words but unsure why. “Haven’t you heard, Doc? The war is over! We’re living in times of peace. All's right with the world. What reason is there to have a ‘not good’ day anymore? How can anyone be anything other than happy now? The war has ended, rejoice!”

The scratch of pen on paper returns as Dr. Kim says, “We both know the war doesn’t end so easily for those who fought in it. You’re more than entitled to a few bad days.”

“What about a bad life in general?” Changbin asks, looking at Dr. Kim for the first time since he’d sat down in his office. “Every day is a bad day.” This is a lie, Changbin knows it even as he says it, but it’s easy to forget the good days when they’re followed by so many bad ones.

Dr. Kim reveals nothing on his face as he sits his pen down and leans forward in his seat. “You are entitled to that as well if you want it, but why would you settle for something like that?”

Changbin looks away from him and Dr. Kim must realize Changbin will say nothing in answer to that, so he changes the subject with another question. “Have you seen Hyunjin lately?”

Changbin shrugs. “He shows up sometimes and bothers me to eat.”

“You haven’t been eating?”

Another shrug. “Food and I aren’t always on speaking terms.”

“Can you elaborate on that?” Dr. Kim asks. “Is it that you’re not feeling hungry? Or you can’t keep food down?”

Changbin frowns. “Sometimes I just forget to eat. I get focused on something and next thing I realize, it’s the middle of the night and I hadn’t eaten anything all day. Sometimes I’m hungry, but I don’t have the desire to do anything about it; it just doesn’t seem important even when I’m not doing anything else. Sometimes, I’m hungry and nothing seems appetizing. I make food because I know I  _ need _ to eat, but I can’t finish it because I’m like physically repulsed or something. I just don’t  _ want _ it and I can’t force myself to eat it.”

Dr. Kim purses his lips and writes something in his notepad. “Do you often go multiple days in a row without eating?”

Changbin shakes his head. “I can usually make myself eat at least one meal a day. When I can’t, Hyunjin usually shows up and makes me. I don’t think I’ve gone more than thirty-six hours without eating  _ something _ . But having even two meals in one day hardly ever happens.”

“There are many different factors that can cause changes in appetite—stress and anxiety and depression, for example,” Dr. Kim informs him. “I’m going to give you a script for a nutrition potion. It’s not a substitute for a proper meal, but it will keep you from wasting away while you’re fighting with this.”

Changbin hums a noncommittal response and Dr. Kim presses on with another question. “Have you been using your magic lately?” Changbin’s lack of a reply is all the response he needs. “Changbin, we’ve discussed this,” he chastises. “Smothering your magic is harmful.”

“I use it for cooking,” Changbin offers, since the stove top in his apartment is powered by active magic instead of latent magic, gas, or electricity.

“I’d feel better hearing that if you hadn’t just admitted to having trouble eating. Catch.”

Changbin looks up in time to catch the colorful object Dr. Kim had thrown at him. It’s a familiar puzzle toy kids use when learning to fine-tune control of their magic: a colorful plastic mass of five woven strands, meant to be untangled by passing your magic through each strand and adapting your output to the checkpoints within.

Changbin could solve this in his sleep once upon a time. Now, he isn’t so sure.

“Free the blue thread,” Dr. Kim orders. 

Each colored strand has a different difficulty ranging from yellow, easiest, to red, hardest, with green, blue, and orange falling in between. The puzzle can be solved all at once or one strand at a time. Changbin turns the tangled ball around in his hand, fingering the twisting links of plastic thoughtfully, feeling the magic within it. Mass produced magic always felt so cold to him. There was something about machines producing magic that took the heart out of it.

Obediently, he feeds a little of his magic into the toy. He finds it surprisingly difficult. Dr. Kim looks as though he’d expected as much.

“Keep working on that while we talk,” he suggests. “Now, tell me, how often do you get out of the house?”

“I have to go to the shops,” Changbin informs him.

“To buy all that food you don’t eat?” Dr. Kim retorts with a chastising click of his tongue. He sighs. “Changbin, I know things are difficult, but are you even trying to make them easier? We’ve been seeing each other for months, but you’ve barely made an attempt at changing your situation.”

Changbin frowns and clenches his fingers tightly around the toy in his hand. “I thought you said everyone heals at their own pace and you don’t expect me to magically get better overnight.”

“I did say that, but I also said I expect you to make an effort. Can you honestly tell me you’ve been putting in the work like you should?”

Changbin purses his lips and offers no reply.

Dr. Kim sighs again and writes something else in his notebook. “I told you I would always be honest with you, and I am honestly very disappointed in you right now.”

Changbin looks at him, and turns away just as quickly. He doesn't dislike Dr. Kim. He's kind, but takes no shit. Honest, but caring. He's good at his job, which makes Changbin feel bad for not trying harder to follow his advice.

“We're almost out of time,” Dr. Kim says, “so homework: first, complete that puzzle, as many of the colors as you can do, start with yellow and work your way up. Second, your journal; I didn't ask you about it today, but I do expect you to be writing in it. Third, at least once this week, I want you to get out of the house for something other than going to the shops. Take a walk in the park, or sit in a coffee shop somewhere. Just do something other than stare at the same four walls. And lastly, eat more. If three meals a day is too much, try for two. If cooking is too much effort, eat out of the can. Don't rely on the potions for nutrients and don't depend on Hyunjin to push you. All that clear?”

Changbin nods. “Yes, sir.”

“Good. We'll meet at the same time next week. And I want to see some progress next time, Changbin. I know you can do better than this.”

“Yes, sir.”

-

Minho wakes to a pressure on his chest. He opens his eyes and finds a slanted pair staring back at him from a feline face. Minho blinks slowly and Soonie bats his face with a paw before yowling and hopping off of him.

The cat struts across the living room while Minho sits up. He’s unsurprised to find that he’d once more fallen asleep on the coach. Minho avoids sleeping in his bed as much as possible these days, choosing instead to stay late at the dance studio: training until he’s too tired to move, and then passing out in whatever corner of the practice room he drops in, or dragging himself home and falling asleep on the couch with a cat curled up in his lap. He’s lucky he’d splurged for such a comfortable couch or else his body would be too stiff for dance.

Minho stands and stretches, feeling the satisfying pops of his joints and yawning.

Now that he’s awake and on his feet, he starts his day as he always does: first taking a shower to wash off last night’s regrets, then filling Soonie, Doongie, and Dori’s food bowls and cleaning their litter boxes. He makes breakfast for himself only after taking the time to give careful attention to each cat.

After breakfast, he grabs his dance bag and heads out the door. Most days he would be heading to the studio to teach his usual morning classes before sequestering himself in a small practice room for the rest of the day, but on the days where he doesn’t have morning classes to teach, Minho drags himself to the opposite side of the city.

Minho doesn’t like hospitals. They’re sterile and impersonal and he can’t just ignore the fact that a lot of people who enter one do not leave alive. Hospitals are supposed to be places of healing and recovery, but death lurks in every corner.

Minho doesn’t like hospitals, but he has walked the route between the hospital entrance and the long term care room on the fifth floor so many times, he could do it with his eyes closed. Which is good, because he completely dissociates the moment he steps in the hospital and doesn’t come back to awareness until he’s standing in the doorway of that fifth floor room.

There in the doorway, he freezes. His eyes lock on the bed by the window but his feet become too heavy to move. He does not want to go in, but he forces himself to, one step at a time. His eyes stay fixed on the bed by the window even as he’s unable to force himself to move further than the bed by the door.

He feels ridiculous. He’s been here so many times, it makes no sense to him how some days he’s fine on these visits, and other days just being in this room makes him feel as though there’s a hole in his chest growing larger by the second.

“You look like you could use some company,” Minho says, pulling his eyes away from the bed by the window and looking instead at the person occupying the bed nearest him. He drops his dance bag next to the visitor’s chair and throws himself down in the seat.

“Bet you get lonely when I don’t visit you,” he says, leaning forward and propping his elbows up on the bed. “No one else ever seems to be here to see you, but worry not, I am once more blessing you with my presence.” There’s no reaction, but he hadn’t expected one. This is a room of coma patients after all.

“Still pretty as ever, I see,” Minho muses, eyes tracing over the comatose patient’s face. Even as pale and thin as he’s grown during his hospital stay, his beauty is still evident in his full lips, clear skin, well-balanced features, and the pretty accent mole under his eye.

“Quite the sleeping beauty,” Minho remarks. “I’m surprised people aren’t lined up around the block for the chance to be your Prince Charming.” Minho looks over at the bed by the window, then back down at the boy in this bed. 

“Between me and you, though, the ‘true love’s first kiss’ thing really is just for fairy tales. If it was real… I mean, it could just be that I’m not his true love, but…” Minho trails off, leaving the sentence incomplete as he gets lost in his thoughts.

He sits in silent contemplation for a long time.

“Eventually,” he says, “we’ll reach the limit to the world’s cruelty… if it has one.”


	3. Chapter 3

###  Chapter Three

Minho wakes in an empty bed. 

It feels strange.

He isn’t entirely sure when sleeping alone became something he is no longer used to doing, but here he is, staring across the empty expanse of his bed and feeling lost. 

Really, it should be the other way around, he’d slept alone for a lot longer than he’d ever slept with anyone. Waking up to someone in his bed should be the strange experience, not this. 

Before he and his boyfriend had started dating, the only warm bodies that had graced Minho’s bed were Soonie, Doongie, and Dori. And even after he got together with his boyfriend, it wasn’t like he’d moved in with him or anything. They slept over with each other a few nights a week, but most of the time Minho slept alone. It wasn’t until his boyfriend left for Basic Training that Minho had realized how lonely an empty bed could feel. 

He got very little rest during that time.

Minho had proposed to his boyfriend the day he got back from Basic Training. It wasn’t as impulsive as that might sound. They’d already been dating for a year and Minho had already been thinking about proposing, he’d already purchased the ring and everything, but was waiting for that “right moment” everyone talked about.

The right moment had been at around two in the morning, while the two of them were cuddled together in Minho’s bed, watching YouTube videos on his cellphone and Minho had realized that little moments like this meant just as much, if not more, to him than any over-the-top romantic setting. He realized he didn’t need fireworks and candlelight for a proposal, any moment, big or small, where the two of them were together was the right moment, because life was made up of little moments and small things.

He got to sleep with his fiance in his arms every night for a week after the proposal, only to be forced back into sleeping alone with his cats after his love was deployed. 

Minho isn’t really the sentimental type. He did not count down the days until his fiance would be back in his arms. And if he had, well it wouldn’t have mattered anyway; counting down the days did not account for the possibility that his love may never return to him and his bed would remain empty forever after.

Minho just lies there in a half-awake haze, staring at the empty side of the bed for a long moment. He finds it nearly impossible to fall asleep when he’s alone in bed, so the fact that he woke up in his bed and not on his couch means that he hadn’t been alone the night before. 

He’s startled out of his thoughts by the sudden presence of a cat there.

Dori nuzzles against him and mews softly. Minho blinks in confusion. Dori butts his face up against Minho’s. Minho smiles softly and reaches out to pet him. Dori purrs, rubbing his whole body against Minho’s palm as he turns and hops off the bed. Minho watches him cross the room and slip out the cracked door.

Feeling a little bit more awake, Minho gets up and climbs out of the bed himself. He’s naked and gross. Looking around at the random assortment of clothing scattered across his bedroom floor, he clicks his tongue in disapproval. Minho is usually a pretty clean person, but his fiance is bad at picking up after himself and if they’d been rushing to get into bed the night before, it’s more likely that Minho would opt to ignore the mess than it is that his fiance would have a sudden burst of cleanliness. He’ll have to clean it up later, when he’s more awake.

Minho picks through the scattered clothing until he finds the pair of boxers he’d been wearing the night before and puts them on. He makes his way out of the room, but stops in the hall outside the closed bathroom door. He can hear sounds coming from within; he waffles between knocking or returning to his room and waiting for the other to come out, but the decision is taken from him when the door suddenly opens.

It’s not his fiance in the bathroom. 

Minho stares at him and feels like a fool. Of course it’s not his fiance. His fiance left for war nearly three years ago and never came home. How does Minho keep forgetting that?

“Hyung,” Felix says in a shaking voice, refusing to meet Minho’s eyes.

Minho should have known it was Felix here when he woke up alone. His fiance always needed to be cajoled out of bed with coffee and breakfast. Minho had always been the first to wake. But whenever he and Felix fall into bed together, Felix usually slips away at the first sign of morning, as though being with Minho while the sun is in the sky is something he cannot stomach. 

Their relationship is too complicated to define and unlikely to be understood by anyone watching from the outside. 

In Minho’s opinion, the only thing really wrong with his relationship with Felix is the timing. That and the guilt that leaves them both barely able to look at each other and sends Felix running for the door with less than a handful of words spoken.

Minho can’t really blame Felix for always running away. Minho would probably run too if every time a person looked at him, they were searching for someone else.

The guilt is shared on both their sides.

“I need to go,” Felix says, though the words don’t really compute with Minho at first. A voice in the back of his head is whispering that if he stands there and looks long enough, the illusion will fade away and Felix will be replaced with the person Minho really wants to be there.

It’s a ridiculous thought. 

He steps aside and Felix scurries past him.

Without thinking, Minho reaches out and grabs him before he’s out of reach. Felix freezes, his magic spiking and making the hairs on Minho’s arms stand on end. Minho lets him go as though he’d been burned. Felix’s dog barks.

“Hyung?” Felix asks, voice sounding shy and afraid.

Minho parts his lips to speak, but the words freeze on his tongue. Something sour swirls in Minho’s stomach. Without a word, he turns away from Felix and closes himself up in the bathroom.

-

“Innie!” Felix yells, carefully plating slices of bacon from the still sizzling skillet. “ _ In _ nie!” he yells again a minute later when there’s no sign he’d been heard the first time. He checks the timer on the rice cooker and sees it’s just about done. He’s already put the plated bacon and eggs on the table and he wonders if he should serve some kimchi as well. 

There’s still no sign of Jeongin, so Felix turns to the small Pomeranian sitting by the table and orders, “Go get Innie.” 

Daengmo barks and immediately hops up and runs down the hall. Felix turns back to the stove, double checking he’d turned the gas off. 

These days, gas (and even electric) appliances were growing increasingly uncommon. Magic powered appliances were considered much safer, posing virtually no risk of accidental fires or whatnot and adding almost no cost to utility bills. Felix’s gas stove is an oddity, but a necessity with the way his magic is wont to behave as of late.

A familiar pawing at this ankle brings Felix back to awareness; he hadn’t even noticed how lost he’d gotten in his own head. He glances around the kitchen before looking down at the dog at his feet. “Daengmo, where’s Innie?”

Daengmo barks and tilts his head in a way that means he wants Felix to follow him. Felix nods and removes his apron before following the Pomeranian down the hall. He’s unsurprised when he’s led to the closed door of Jeongin’s room and instantly knows why his roommate hadn’t heard him and why Daengmo had been unable to get in. 

Felix’s magic reaches out and latches on to the privacy ward without him directing it to. But that’s the problem: his magic acting without him directing it to. His magic had always been inquisitive by nature, always eager to reach out to explore and learn something new, prodding at its environment like a tongue at a loose tooth, but Felix had also had control over it before, more or less. He’d worked hard for that control, had depended on it to empower his spell casting. 

He doesn’t have that control anymore. After the war, after Han...

Honestly, if not for Daengmo, he would be completely lost. 

Felix traces the paths of magic woven into the ward curiously. It’s an anchored spell, neither latent nor active, attached to the residual magic always present in the air. It’s well crafted, though Felix can tell Jeongin was not the one who cast it. Which makes sense, since there’s only one reason Jeongin would even consider putting a privacy ward around his room in the first place.

Felix overpowers it easily. Anchored magic isn’t particularly strong unless it’s anchored to a proper magic storage device. It takes only a small push to change the direction of the magic paths and the spell structure crumbles.

Felix checks the door knob and is unsurprised to find it unlocked; physical locks are often overlooked with the placement of a magic barrier. 

“Yang Jeongin!” he yells, flinging the door open. “Breakfast is ready!”

There’s a shriek of surprise. Someone falls out of the bed. Felix snickers.

“Hyung,” Jeongin yelps, clutching a pillow in front of him as if he’d been caught doing something more indecent than sleeping.

“Don’t worry, I made enough for Minnie, too,” Felix says.

From the floor on the other side of the bed, a voice calls out, “Thanks, we’ll be right out.”

Felix continues laughing as he steps back into the hall and closes the door behind him. Daengmo trots after him as he heads back to the kitchen to lay out another plate for Seungmin. The rice is done cooking, so he takes the time to dish out bowls of that as well.

“Good morning, hyung,” Jeongin says, finally making it to the kitchen with Seungmin trailing behind him.

“Good morning, Innie, Seungmin,” Felix greets. Seungmin waves as he throws himself into a seat, still looking more asleep than awake. “Late night?” Felix asks as he pulls out his own chair.

“I have an exam today,” Jeongin says, reaching for his chopsticks lazily.

“He called me over to help him study,” Seugmin explained, also reaching for his chopsticks and digging into his rice. “Thanks for the meal.”

“How’d it go?” Felix asks, opening the fridge and pulling out the cup of iced Americano he’d purchased for Jeongin before he’d returned home and started cooking.

Jeongin groans. “I’m going to fail.” His eyes light up at the sight of the coffee Felix sits in front of him and he grabs for it eagerly. 

Felix hadn’t known Seungmin would be there, so he hadn’t thought to buy him coffee, but poured him a glass of water instead. The only reason there’s enough food for Seungmin is because Felix is still in the habit of cooking for more than just him and Jeongin.

The four of them—Felix, Jeongin, Seungmin, and Han—had all lived together in this same two bedroom apartment for almost three years. After the war, Seungmin’s parents had asked him to move back home and Han… well, Felix and Jeongin had to get used to it just being the two of them. 

Jeongin’s parents had wanted him to return home, too, but he’d chosen to enroll in an area university that would be impossible to commute from if he moved back to Busan. Jeongin had never cared much for school, so Felix likes to think Jeongin had done this to have a reason not to leave Felix alone.

“You’re not going to fail,” Seungmin says, throwing an arm around Jeongin’s shoulder and pulling him close despite his protests. “My dongsaeng is very smart and he has a hyung like me helping him.”

Jeongin shoves Seungmin away with a disgusted face. 

Felix laughs. “I’m sure you’re going to do fine, Innie.”

Jeongin makes a noncommittal noise and shoves a slice of bacon into his mouth.

“You were out pretty late yourself, Lix,” Seungmin says casually about halfway through their meal. “I never heard you come in.”

Felix blushes and stares down at his food. He had hoped Jeongin would have gone to bed without noticing his failure to come home the previous night, but he hadn’t counted on Seungmin being there. When they all lived together, Seungmin was the type to go around checking on everyone before he went to bed himself, and if he didn’t know where someone was, he would stay up waiting for them to come home.

For a while, before Seungmin had moved back in with his parents, Felix would come out of his room at three in the morning to use the bathroom and find Seungmin passed out on the couch as though he’d fallen asleep waiting for someone to come home. 

The only person he could be waiting for was Han.

The first time Felix had stayed out all night without telling anyone, he’d found Seungmin in the same position.

It isn’t like Felix makes a habit of staying out all night; sure it had happened more than a few times recently, but it was nothing. He wasn’t going out partying or getting in trouble. Jeongin always knew exactly where he would be on the nights Felix didn’t come home. So did Seungmin, but he just didn’t approve of it.

Felix can’t meet his eyes. “I stayed over at a friend’s place.” It’s not a lie, but not quite the truth. The deception is in the word “friend,” because surely there’s another name for “guy I’m regularly having sex with even though I know I shouldn’t be.” 

Felix isn’t a fan of repeating the same mistake over and over, but this is one mistake he can’t seem to stop making. It’s complicated.

“Hyung,” Jeongin says. There’s concern but no judgement in his voice. 

All the judgement comes from Seungmin, instead, evident in the clenching of his jaw and the hard look in his eyes.

Abruptly, Felix pushes his chair away from the table and gets to his feet. “What time is your exam?” he asks, in an attempt to change the subject as he gathers his still mostly full dishes and carries them over to the sink. “Shouldn’t you be leaving soon?” he pushes on without waiting for a response. “Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention, I picked up another mid-morning shift, so I should get going myself.”

“Are you coming home right after, today?” Jeongin asks.

“I’ll probably stop by for a visit before coming back,” Felix tells him.

“But you  _ will _ be coming home, right?” Seungmin presses. Seungmin means well. He’s Felix’s best friend. The two of them are so close, Felix had named his service dog after him. He knows Seugmin is only pushing because he cares, even if Felix would rather he didn’t.

Felix turns to meet his eyes and smiles. “I’ll even pick up dinner,” he promises.

-

It’s three days after his meeting with Dr. Kim when Changbin finally finds the drive to leave the house again.

He dons his prosthetic leg, feels his magic connect to it, and almost changes his mind. Magic dependent prostheses are meant to feel more natural. They are meant to feel like an extension of your magic, and thus an extension of yourself. Maybe it’s because Changbin feels so disconnected from his own magic that the limb feels foreign and loathsome.

Changbin wonders if his magic will ever start feeling like his own again. He’d once been considered something of a prodigy in the magic arts. He’d had such a natural understanding of magic theory and spell structure, some had even ventured to call him a genius.

Using his magic had once been as easy as flexing a limb. Now that limb felt numb… or amputated.

The only reason he bothers with the prosthesis is because it’s the better option to dealing with the looks he’d get from passersby if he went out leaning only on a crutch with his dangling stub plain to see.

The only reason he’s bothering to leave the house is because he doesn’t want to disappoint Dr. Kim, not after all he’d done for him.

Kim Minjun had visited him in the hospital when Changbin had been just another soldier wounded in combat. He’d given Changbin his business card and implored him to call if he needed anything. Even if Changbin didn’t want to see him professionally, Dr. Kim offered to help him in any and every way he could.

Dr. Kim had lost someone in the war, that much was clear, but Changbin wasn’t sure who. A spouse, maybe? Or a son? Changbin had called him when it was nearing time for him to be released from the hospital and he’d realized he had nowhere to go. His parents hadn’t approved of him enlisting and had made sure he knew he wasn’t welcome to return home. Maybe they would have forgiven him if he’d returned in the same condition in which he’d left, or if he hadn’t returned at all, but he’d come home crippled and they wouldn’t even visit him in the hospital.

All his friends were in the middle of their own crises and Changbin hadn’t wanted to add to their burdens. So he’d had nowhere to go and no one else to turn to.

Dr. Kim had paid for him to stay in a hotel for a few nights and had pulled some strings to get him in the housing program that had led to him getting his apartment. When he needed a ride to physical therapy, Dr. Kim had helped with that too.

When Hyunjin had shown up that first time, Dr. Kim was the only person Changbin could think to call.

Dr. Kim never treated him as if he were some broken thing. Or like he was fragile. He never lied to him or sugarcoated his words. He’d never made Changbin feel as if the best thing he could have done would have been to die in the war the way the rest of the world did. 

There’s no use for soldiers in times of peace. Especially not one-legged ones with thousand yard stares. To society, he’s just an ugly reminder of what used to be. If he couldn’t assimilate back into normal civilian life, then better he just fade away. No one needed him limping around, reminding them the cost of their much-celebrated peace.

Dr. Kim never made him feel like that. He’d been in his corner from day one. And, sure, he wasn’t the only one Dr. Kim was helping, but he didn’t make Changbin feel as if he was just one more of many.

Dr. Kim believed Changbin could be better than he is, and that made him want to try.

So he dons his much hated prosthetic and steps outside into a world he feels unwelcome in, because Dr. Kim told him that he is meant to belong to it.

When Changbin had first come home, every street had been lined with flags and banners declaring the end of a war that had dragged on for nearly ten years. There’d been parades and parties, people singing in the streets while displays of magic lit up the sky. Bells were ringing and children were laughing, and dozens of white doves flew through the sky. Everyone had cried and rejoiced. The war was over. Finally, finally,  _ finally _ the war was over. Everything would be better now, everything would return to normal.

Changbin had watched the victory celebrations on a television screen from his hospital bed, having just learned that there would be no saving his leg and feeling none of the joy displayed on the screen.

Everyone wanted to celebrate the end of the war, but no one wanted to acknowledge the cost of it.

Changbin had enlisted fresh out of high school, when he was young and dumb and wanted to make a difference. He’d lost so much. More than just years of his life wasted on a battlefield, more than just his youth and his innocence, more than just his leg.

When he closed his eyes, he could not see the bright ray of light that was the coming times of peace. The war still dominated his very being—both awake and asleep, he was plagued with memories of things not too long past.

Brothers and comrades falling around him after unquestioningly following bullshit orders issued by men who’d never been closer than fifty kilometers from the front line. His magic being useless, unable to save a single life. Bullets falling like rain, bombs streaking across the sky like shooting stars. The ever present hum of magic so loud nothing else could be heard, not even the screams of the dying.

Hundreds of desperate soldiers casting spells at once, thickening the air like an incoming storm, the pressure building up so much it was hard to breathe. Dust and smoke darkening the sky like an eclipse. Magic stealing the lives of brethren, so quickly and suddenly it looked as though they’d simply fallen asleep.

Missiles leveling cities and killing indiscriminately. Entire families lying dead in housing blocks; mothers using their last seconds of life to cast too-weak shielding spells over their children. Crying infants in burnt-out houses. Shadows on the ground where people had once stood. Not knowing which side of the war had committed the massacre, but feeling guilty all the same.

War is an ugly thing. But the victory banners were bright and cheerful and the flags had flapped merrily in the breeze and the kissing couples were happy and beautiful.

Sixty seconds of silence to mourn the fallen, and six weeks of uninterrupted celebration to welcome back peace.

Soldiers returned home with empty hearts, wondering how they’d survived when so many others did not. Wondering why they’d survived when some more worthy than them had passed. Moving through the world, empty and directionless, the memories of the dead more alive than their own spirits.

Waking from nightmares and searching for comfort, only to find themselves alone with their thoughts and their ghosts.

Not knowing how to ask for the help they so desperately needed, because everywhere they turned they were greeted by the words, “At least the war is over.”

The war does not end so easily for those who fought in it.

Now, as he walks the streets, there are still a few flags displayed in some windows and a few weather-tattered banners hanging from light poles. And everyone is going about their day like normal, ten years of war all but forgotten after only ten months of peace.

It’s early afternoon when he leaves the house. The nine to five crowd are still chained to their cubicles and only housewives and their young children occupy the streets. No one looks twice at him. His long pants hide his prosthesis and his magic accounts for the difference between artificial and flesh-and-bone, leaving no limp or uneven tread. To all who see him, he is a whole person.

The only thing out of place about him is that he’s obviously young, obviously not in school, and unlikely to be employed if he’s out at this time of day. But there’d been a surplus of NEETs since the end of the war, his fellow ex-soldiers failing to fall back into society the way they were meant to.

Changbin walks on.

His destination had been the park, but he only makes it as far as the coffee shop. It’s a quaint little place, not a franchise location, but a small local business. It has mismatched furniture and a stained bar top, DIY style lampshades and wall decor. It smells like fresh ground coffee beans and there’s soft music playing on hidden speakers filling the room.

There’s a couple of young women seated in a back corner and a barista behind the counter with a small, fluffy dog curled up on the countertop, but no one else. 

The sight of the dog makes Changbin feel a twinge of sorrow and longing, thoughts filled with memories of another small, fluffy dog running around his feet. He pushes those thoughts away. It's the wrong color and breed from the one in his memories anyway.

The little shop has a warm atmosphere. It’s the kind of place that makes you want to while away the day with a book or creative project. It’s  _ peaceful _ .

Changbin makes his way over to the counter only somewhat hesitantly. He looks up at the chalkboard menu and notes that the shop offers a full lunch selection in addition to coffee and pastries.

“Do you know what you’d like, or do you need more time?” The barista asks. He’s a young man around Changbin’s own age, give or take a year, with artificial blond hair and a generous dusting of freckles on his cheeks. His smile is bright and welcoming. Changbin can’t help but smile back.

“Do you have any suggestions?”

“Just coffee or lunch?” the barista asks. He’s wearing a dark blue apron over a white button up shirt, but there’s no visible name tag anywhere.

Changbin hadn’t eaten yet that day. Honestly, in the three days since he’d seen Dr. Kim, he’d only eaten three and a half meals, and had made due with the nutrition potions (that tasted like mud and cinnamon) the rest of the time. He hadn’t had a nutrient potion that morning, despite having skipped breakfast, because mud and cinnamon is not the most appetizing combination.

“Lunch,” Changbin concedes. “Just something small, though. And coffee.”

The barista looks at Changbin with a curious tilt of the head and the hairs on Changbin’s arms stand on end, signs of magic being used on him.

Changbin frowns, then glares. His own magic flares, but instead of warningly like he’d wanted, it welcomes the strangers magic eagerly.

The thing about empathic magic, even when it isn’t your dominant nature, is that it thrives on contact with other people. Changbin’s magic had always reached out to those around him, connecting to their magic and grounding him.

With Changbin secluding himself within his apartment, and burying his magic deep down whenever he had to venture out, he’d been denying himself that grounding connection to others. No wonder his magic latched on to the first touch of another it could find.

“Don’t do that,” Changbin growls, pulling his magic back and holding it beneath his skin.

He nearly falls over as his magic is yanked away from the prosthetic leg holding him up. He wobbles forward and catches himself on the counter top, his heart pounding in his chest.

The barista lets out a surprised squeak and reaches out as if to catch him, but stops before actually touching him. “I’m sorry,” he says, speaking much too loud and looking unsure of what to do. The small dog that was lying on the counter hops up and lets out a single soft yapping bark and positions itself between Changbin and the barista, facing the barista.

Changbin leans heavily on the counter top as he releases the hold on his magic enough to reconnect to his artificial leg. Technically, whenever he cut contact between the limb and his magic, he’s supposed to remove the leg entirely for at least thirty minutes, but this is not the place for that. He glares up at the flustered barista, who somehow manages to turn even redder. The dog barks again.

“At ease, Daengmo,” the barista says to the dog who immediately quiets and sits back down. The barista turns back to Changbin and repeats his apology. “I really am sorry. Did I hurt you? I know it’s rude to use magic on someone without permission, but my magic is inquisitive and I can’t always control it. I didn’t mean to…”

“It’s fine,” Changbin huffs. “I’m fine,” he repeats with more conviction. He pushes himself upright and ignores how his leg feels even more foreign and wrong.

The ladies in the corner of the room had ceased their conversation and Changbin knows they’re watching him now. He needs to leave. This was a mistake. He’d tried to follow Dr. Kim’s orders, but this was too much.

He takes a step away from the counter, it’s shaky and unbalanced, but he’s still standing. He takes another step back, then saying nothing more to the barista, and ignoring the gaze of the women, he turns and rushes out of the shop. He’s walking with a visible limp as he hurries down the street, needing more than anything to return to the safety of his apartment.


	4. Chapter 4

###  Chapter Four

“We added cheesecake to the menu at the cafe,” Felix says, freeing Daengmo from his carrier sling and taking a seat in the empty chair next to the bed by the window. “I brought a slice and I’m going to sit here and eat it right in front of you and there’s nothing you can do about it. Unless you want to wake up and fight me for it.”

There’s no reaction from the person on the bed, but Felix hadn’t expected there to be. He’d known even before he’d visited the hospital, he’d known from the moment he’d woken up that morning, there would be no change. But still, he had hoped.

Hope is all he has to fill the void Han has left in him.

He grabs the small brown box with the slice of cheesecake from where he’d sat it on the table next to the bed and opens it. The cheesecake slice is a little battered from the trip, but still recognizable. There’s a small cup of strawberry syrup on the side, but Felix doesn’t bother with drizzling it on. He grabs the little wooden ice cream spoon it was packed with instead of plasticware and scoops up the smallest amount.

“Mmm, so good,” Felix exaggerates after eating the small bite. It really is good, but Felix doesn’t care too much for cheesecake. The amount of saturated fats per slice makes it unappealing to him; he likes the taste well enough, but prefers not to eat it himself. 

He preferred it when Han was the one eating it, and his enjoyment of it was so strong, Felix could feel it without even trying and he could taste it on his own tongue even though it was in Han’s mouth. Felix got to have all the flavor with none of the fats, but more than that, he got to see Han’s eyes light up with every bite, and his smile as he stuffed it in his cheeks, and he got to feel the indescribable joy the other felt from such a simple little thing. 

Felix could get drunk on Han’s joy. 

They were magical twins, the closest thing the world has to real soulmates. Two completely unrelated people who happened to be born into the world and took their first breaths at the exact same time and became tied together by a magic beyond all understanding. Always together even when billions of miles apart, manifesting in each other’s dreams, feeling each other’s emotions, hearing each other’s thoughts, a constant in each other’s lives. A promise that neither would ever be alone. 

“You’re really missing out,” Felix says, forcing himself to take another bite. “You better wake up before I eat it all.”

He stares at Han. 

He’s too still. 

So still, he might as well be a corpse.

Felix can’t even say he looks as though he’s sleeping, because even asleep Han was more animated than this. The person in this hospital bed is just an empty shell, a hollowed out husk wearing the face of Felix’s soulmate.

Not for the first time, Felix feels the urge to grab him by the shoulders and shake him and scream in his face, demanding he wake up.

“Haven’t you been sleeping long enough?” Felix asks, soft and pitiful.

Han had been a presence in Felix’s life from the second they were born, but now the places in his heart, mind, and soul that used to be taken up by him are just an echoing emptiness. And it  _ hurts _ .

Daengmo lets out a single bark, a warning that Felix’s magic is beginning to spike.

Felix feels as though there’s ants under his skin every time he sits in this room. He feels like he’s dying when he sits in this room. There hasn’t been a single visit where his magic hasn’t slipped his control, but who can blame it? Han is  _ right there _ , but he’s further away than he’d been when they lived on different continents.

Felix sets the cheesecake back on the table and takes a moment to close his eyes and measure his breathing. Daengmo hops into his lap, the tiny match flame of his presence igniting in the back of Felix’s mind as the dog tries to help him wrest control of his magic.

No, he has not gotten used to feeling so empty. He does not want to get used to feeling so empty. He just wants Han to wake up.

“Hyung, please come back,” Felix says, reaching over and grabbing Han’s hand. 

While they were born at the exact same time, because of timezone differences Han was a day older than Felix. When Felix had moved to Korea, Han had jokingly told him he was required to call him “hyung.” Felix rarely did once he’d realized he’d been tricked, usually only when he was trying to butter Han up for something.

“I can’t go much longer without you, hyung,” Felix admits in a whisper.

First breath and last, magical twins were supposed to take them together. When one died, the other followed. Han’s current state of not-dead-but-not-fully-alive left Felix existing in a similar state of limbo.

“I don’t want to go on like this.”

-

Minho spends every evening in a private practice room at the studio, not teaching classes or choreographing for work, just working through things alone with just the music and his magic.

This is when he feels most alive.

Dancing has always been Minho’s passion. Since he was very young, dancing had been one of the few things that brought him genuine joy. While other kids had been focused on fine tuning their spells and pushing their magic to new limits, Minho had focused on fine tuning his dance and pushing his body to new limits. Dance has always excited him in a way magic never did.

This was more than a little due to the fact that Minho had never meshed well with the way magic is taught. 

Upon first starting school, children are tested to determine the nature of their magic and then taught in what is considered the best approach for their nature. In humans, magic is broken into four categories, or natures as they are called: aggressive, inquisitive, receptive, and empathic. 

Magic is energy and a person’s magic energy continues to act even when not being actively controlled. The magic energy in humans exists in natural opposition with the latent magic energy that exists in the environment. Magic nature is determined by the way a person’s magic interacts with the energy in the environment when not in active use. 

Aggressive magic manipulates the environmental energy around it until that energy is forced to change to be in balance with the human magic or is forced into submission. Inquisitive magic seeks only to learn about the environment around it but doesn’t change it or itself. Receptive magic adapts itself and the magic around it in order to reach balance. Empathic magic adapts itself not to balance, but to assimilate. 

The easiest way it’s explained is to imagine that magic energy vibrates at different frequencies. Say your own magic energy is on frequency A, for example, and the magic energy around you is on frequency C. If your magic is aggressive, it would force the magic around you to also vibrate a frequency A. Inquisitive magic would just take notice of what frequency the opposing magic is on, but do nothing to change it. Receptive magic would change itself to frequency B and pull the environmental magic to be B as well. While empathic magic would change itself to be on frequency C and blend with the magic around it.

Sometimes a person’s magic fits into multiple categories, acting differently in certain situations, giving them dominant and secondary natures, but everyone is forced to identify as at least one.

The natural magic energy in the environment is categorized as a fifth nature: passive magic. Passive magic is the magic that exists in all living things. From the smallest insect to the tallest tree, if it breathes or grows, there is magic within it. But plants and animals lack the awareness to channel their magic into anything other than what they need it to do to live, they never actively use it, so it’s considered passive.

Human beings had taken that innate magic within all living beings and warped it, pushed it to its limits and then pushed through those limits. The animal kingdom used it’s magic to survive, but humans are rarely content with just surviving when they could be thriving. 

Spells were a human creation. All standardized rules of magic, and the limitations placed on how it is taught and used, are all human creation. People these days tend to forget that. 

Long before spellcasting was the norm, magic still existed in all living beings and people learned to use it in the way that best suited them individually instead of being confined to a generalized foundation based on the restrictive concepts of “nature.” 

An animal’s magic can act just as aggressively as a human’s, yet it’s called passive because of how it’s used. Labelling magic based on how it acts over how it’s used seems like an okay idea on paper, until you get generations of people who never learn to use their magic comfortably because they’re not naturally inclined towards the standard system.

On paper, Minho’s magic is categorized as aggressive, so his foundation magic studies were tailored to that. But Minho personally doesn’t consider his magic aggressive. Minho doesn’t think his magic fits within any of the four natures that made up the standard definition of magic.

If Minho had to categorize his magic, he would call it expressive. Expressive magic declares “I am here and this is me” with no care for the magic energy around it. It vibrates on its own frequency and doesn’t care what frequency the energy around it is on. But sometimes the energy around it naturally adapts itself to balance or assimilate, which was enough to label Minho’s magic as aggressive, because according to every formal teaching of magic, expressive magic does not exist.

As a child, Minho had been forced to use his magic in a way that did not feel natural to him. Now, as an adult, he is free of such restrictions.

When Minho channels his magic through his entire body and releases it through dance, surely he’s only doing what his ancestors before him had done, back before humans had tried to apply rules to something that had long existed without such trivialities. Movement and dance predated even spoken language; why was the idea of it being used as a structure for magic so outrageous?

The hum of magic is the loudest thing to his ears, louder even than the music spilling from the speakers. The energy buzzes under his skin as each precise movement Minho makes forms a new pathway in the magic structure he’s forming. 

The magic spills from every pore of his skin, careful and controlled. 

Spellcasting is all about control. That’s the one thing schools get right as they drill it into all their students’ heads from day one of magic studies.

Everyone has magic, but not everyone has the same magic levels. Some people are born with large pools of magic energy while others only have only the minimum required to live. But at the end of the day, magic ability is determined not by how much magic you can access, but how well you can control it. 

Using magic is about shape and form, bending magic energy into different structures to break the bounds of what it is. The better you can control your magic, the more ways you can shape it, the more spells you can cast. Fine tuned control beat large magic pools every time.

When dancing, Minho could control his magic as easily as breathing. With how he’d been taught in school, his magic had always felt like a foreign presence inside his body that he needed to wrestle into submission to be able to use, but when dancing his magic felt like the natural extension of himself it’s meant to be. He and his magic are one. He feels powerful and unstoppable as though he could make the whole world kneel at his feet.

The music cuts abruptly and Minho stumbles in surprise. He recovers quickly, but not quickly enough to stop the delicate magic structure he’d been building from crumbling. It wasn’t like there’d been any intent behind the spell anyway, other than just testing his limits, but he’s still annoyed.

He turns towards the stereo and sends a hard look towards the person standing there. He’d been so caught up in himself and his magic, he hadn’t even noticed anyone entering the room.

“Kim Seungmin,” Minho says, walking towards the side of the room. “What are you doing here?” He asks it in a tone that says he doesn’t really care about the answer.

“Looking for you,” Seungmin says, grabbing Minho’s water bottle from his dance bag and holding it out to him.

“Well you’ve found me.” Minho grabs the water bottle from his hand with a small nod of thanks. He lowers his mask to take a sip. He can feel Seungmin watching him, but he doesn’t really care. Kim Seungmin isn’t someone Minho has ever felt self-conscious in front of. Beside, Seungmin is much too polite to stare at his scar and had more tact than to make it obvious that he was awkwardly  _ not _ staring at it.

Minho lowers his water bottle and raises his mask back into place. Seungmin continues watching him silently. “Did you want something or did you come all this way just to stare at my pretty face?”

For a moment, it looks like Seungmin isn’t going to respond, which is out of character for him. Kim Seungmin has never had a problem with telling Minho exactly what he was thinking. This kind of hesitancy never existed between them.

Finally, he stands straight, squares his shoulders, looks Minho in the eye and says, “I want you to stay away from Felix.”

Minho barely pauses. “Well, I’d say it was nice to see you, Kim Seungmin, but that would be a lie. You know the way out.”

Seungmin clenches his teeth and stares hard at Minho. “I’m serious. Stay away from Felix.”

Minho turns away from Seungmin to put his water bottle back in his bag. “Shouldn’t you be telling Felix to stay away from me? You’re  _ his  _ best friend, right? That means he has to care about what you say, unlike me who couldn’t care less what you want.”

“Felix isn’t in a good place right now and you’re taking advantage…”

“I’m not taking advantage of shit!” Minho snaps, more harshly than he’d intended. He turns back to Seungmin and meets him glare for glare. “Felix is an adult capable of making his own decisions. Just because you don’t approve of those decisions doesn’t mean he’s suddenly a baby you need to protect from the Big Bad Minho. You want to control his actions, you take it to him. It’s got nothing to do with me.”

“It has everything to do with you,” Seungmin states. “Felix is hurting and you’re not making it better. He went to you for comfort and you took advantage. You’re the hyung here, you’re supposed to help him.”

“He doesn’t own the monopoly on pain, Seungmin. I’m hurting, too. Who’s supposed to help me? Who’s supposed to worry that maybe I’m the one being taken advantage of? Am I supposed to carry both of our burdens just because I’m the hyung and he’s the innocent little dongsaeng I’m supposed to protect, while having no one to lean on myself?”

The expression on Seungmin’s face is one Minho doesn’t want to see. He turns away and starts fiddling with the stereo instead. 

“Hyung…”

“Like I said, you know the way out. Goodbye, Kim Seungmin. Don’t come back here again.” He doesn’t look at Seungmin as he restarts his music and heads back to the center of the room. Seungmin doesn’t say anything. Eventually, Minho hears the sound of the studio door closing as Seungmin leaves.

-

Changbin wakes in the middle of the night, breathless and sweating. His leg aches like it’s burning and his blankets cling to him like grasping hands. The only light in his room is the streetlights and moonlight that streams in through his window, and for a second he has no idea where he is.

His heart is pounding.

Blindly, he reaches out for the crutches beside his bed and forces himself up. He doesn’t bother with his prosthetic as he stumbles his way out of his dark bedroom through his equally dark apartment.

His strength leaves him just as he makes it across the living room. He falls to his knees on the floor in front of the couch. He feels dumb. It’s not like he could have run away from the demons in his head anyway.

Gentle fingers card through Changbin’s hair. He doesn’t even have the strength to panic as he looks up to find their source. Hyunjin sits on the couch above him, smiling softly as he runs his fingers across Changbin’s head.

A pained sound wells in Changbin’s chest and explodes from his mouth. He wraps his arms around Hyunjin’s waist and cries.

“Shh, it’s alright,” Hyunjin says, soft as a whisper, his fingers still moving through Changbin’s hair soothingly. 

Changbin sobs, squeezing his eyes closed and trying to block out the images of battlefields and magic spells that had followed him into the waking world from his dreams. 

“Hyunjin.”

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading, please comment. stay happy. stay healthy. stay hydrated. and stay Stay.


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